Content Marketing in Higher Education

Content Marketing is the latest trend in marketing. You build content based on your prospective audience and then find the audience to drive to the content. That sounds simple, yet it's not. What is included in Content Marketing? Well, basically everthing you do to market your College or Univeristy. Direct mail, e-mail, website, blogs, FAQ's, billboards, newspaper/radio/television/cable ads all contribute to the overall marketing of your Content. The difficulty with Content Marketing is that the content must constanly change, be updated, be new, and most institutions aren't very good at keeping things fresh. New videos of campus, new blogs from either marketing or the world of academia you are promoting.

Imagine a blog(s) sorted by field of study, written by not only professors (I know, thats a major topic in and of itself) but by students in the program. Maybe a video of a "fun" class. Lab work. An experiment where something blows up! You never know what might peek someone's interest.

Transform those blogs into copy for the school website. Include them in a direct mail/e-mail campaign to promote attending YOUR institutaion. So, what is content marketing in reality? Nothing more than a well coordinated effort to promote your institution to prospective students. The difficulty is, your prospect pool is so diverse, you need massive amounts of content to fill that need. Yet, by providing content on Education, Pre-Med, Psychology, Computer Science, Liberal Arts you are finding ways to promote all you have available, on a unique/personalized platform.

Imagine, sending out an e-mail campaign to prospective degree completion prospects, with a list of potential programs for them to consider. Each e-mail lists the degrees with a link to a unique landing page (yes, 10 programs mean 10 landing pages) but each is tailored to a specific degree program. Then once they fill out the form (keep it short), send them to an information/welcome page for that program, then to the admissions site to apply.

All of this is content driven, focused and uniquely yours to implement for YOUR institution. Content Marketing is not easy, but can be HIGHLY successful if implemented correctly.

Have realistic expectations.

Expectations!

What is it about marketers and marketing that makes us suddenly think we are the exception to the rule. What I mean is, we market our University in a way that we ourselves would never respond to. This may be a bit of a stretch, but let me offer a story to help explain my position.

You're sitting in your home either reading the mail, or scrolling through e-mails. There in front of you is an offer from a local car dealership (one you know well). The marketing piece goes on to explain that you can purchase a brand new car, with great features, mileage, styling for only $28,500. You, of course, have been thinking about a new car so you head to the dealership, walk in, tell the salesman you'd like one of their cars and put down your check for $28,500.

Interestingly enough, I doubt any of you would do this. You research the car, IS IT your style? Does it get good gas mileage? What is the repair history on the vehicle? Will it suit your family either in size or comfort? So you research,  check to make sure that THIS is the car for you.

Now, let's fast forward to marketing your University. You prepare what you think is the perfect e-mail campaign, or postal campaign, You drop one message and expect people to flock to your door eager to plunk down $28,500 in tuition for an institution they may know of, but actually know nothing about. How do students actually make a choice as to what school to attend. Either to complete a degree or to get an advanced degree. They do exactly what you would expect them to do. They research, look at who attends your institution, what graduates have done, how much will it cost, will it fit in the family schedule or lifestyle.

There was a time when the expectation was that you needed three contacts before someone was willing to make a buying decision. Yet, most Universities market once, maybe twice and expect prospective students to sign up and attend. Today, the rule of thumb is more around 20 impressions. Now, don't get me wrong, but reality is more than 3, less than 20 for most people. But this includes all forms of impressions. Radio, television, billboards, web surfing, direct mail, e-mail, personal referrals, LinkedIn, Face Book to name a few. All of these give the prospect some idea as to what your institution is all about. So, why do schools constantly do a single, or two marketing campaigns, get few if any responses and then dub "direct mail", "e-mail" a failure? In fact, it's not a failure, you simply didn't give the prospect enough information or time to make an informed decision.

As with buying a car, students need to focus on their needs. For example, if a student is concerned about going back to school they may be asking themselves "Can I do it?". You should offer them a free course to take as a warm up. A course that WILL apply to their degree! You invest in them, they will invest in you. It's in a way, a two month free trial. It's time that schools focus on what it really takes to sell someone on attending their institution. Information, frequent contacts and understanding that THEY are the most important person attending your institution. Give them a free class, one that will get them used to coming on campus, sitting in class and I will bet they will keep coming back.

If you build it, they may not come! Thoughts on closing the sale.

I have been conducting e-mail campaigns for a few years now. In that time, I have sent out over 1 million prospect letters to prospects for undergraduate degree completion programs or graduate programs. An interesting trend has occured that I didn't anticipate, nor did I expect. Most clients look at their direct mail/e-mail campaigns as an end all and be all. Literally "If we send it they will come" perspective. Yet, like most campaigns a few facts need to be reviewed.

First if you watch TV, look in magazines, read newspapers, what strikes you about the ads that you see? Yes, there may be too many of them, but, the fact is, they are repetitive! In order to generate sales, businesses have learned to repeat the same message over and over again to get someone's attention. This is the first rule that I see happening. Mail fewer pieces but send them more often is very helpful when planning a direct marketing program.

Second, something particular to e-mail campaigns is what are prospects "clicking through to"? Basically most clients click through to the program web page, or to the general website for their school. There is no way you can track performance if you do this. They go, disappear into the mass of traffic that goes directly to your website. You MUST create a landing page. That page is specifically designed to do two things. One, capture their name/address/phone and e-mail. Next you MUST succinctly state your special offer for them giving you their information. As an example, if you offer a $1,000 scholarship for registering and attending your institution, the landing page informs them that if they don't fill out this form, they will not be eligible for the scholarship. Cause and effect. You want $1,000, tell us who you are.

Third, follow up on the campaign. Using the landing page, using whatever response vehicle you can manage contact, these prospects multiple times, just like commercial retailers do. The recency/frequency of contact are keys in winning over prospects.

So, how do you build an effective e-mail campaign? That will be in the next blog within the next few days.

The reality of Click Through Capture Program

We have a click through program that allows Colleges and Universities to receive 100% of the click throughs when an e-mail campaign is completed. This is a wonderful time saving program that eliminates YOUR need to capture names and addresses on your end. But, there are a few limitations to this program.

First, and foremost, our e-mail files that we send to are double opt-in files. What this means, is that the person receiving the first e-mail (that generated the click through) has given permission for us to send them e-mail messages on a given topic (in this case educational opportunities). The difficulty with this is that when you take possession of the list you are not sending e-mails to them from an "approved" source, but from whatever source you are using to distribute your e-mails. (As a side note, do NOT send from your school's servers. This is a good way of having your school black listed and even though the people have created a business relationship with you by clicking through, you can be perceived by a machine as spamming.) Because you are not sending from our servers, you may, or may not get through the prospective student's firewall, or filtering system. In my experience you can see a 35% to 55% bounce rate for ANY e-mails provided to you using the click through program.

It is for this reason we provide the postal as well as e-mail address of all the click throughs. It allows you a secondary channel to reach these prospects.

Second, People have short memories. They may or may not remember requesting information, or confirming that they want to receive information if time has passed. So, you may have some issues with people complaining or expressing concern that they received mail from you. Out of 4 recent campaigns where we provide click through names/addresses to University clients, we found that fewer than 8 (out of an average of 1400 click throughs) complained. They may be vocal, but they are a very small minority.

Finally, for any given campaign, you need to offer them something substantial to peak their interest. Waiving application fees is nothing in this day and age. Find something of value that a prospective student would feel "supports" their educational goals. Scholarship, book discount for the first semester, free daycare if you offer it are just a few of the options available to you that just might set you apart.

Click throughs are a tool to a goal. Understanding their positive points and limitations will help you better achieve your recruitment goals.

Where do prospect names come from for e-mail campaigns

This is a common question I get from clients and prospects regarding where our prospect names come from for our e-mail campaigns. Eveyone has the preconceived notion that there are bots out there, combing every e-mail server harvesting names left and right. Those names are then placed in a massive database and sold. Actually, this does in fact happen and as you might know, these lists are garbage. We ONLY use double opt-in e-mail addresses. What is the difference between a harvested e-mail list and a double opt-in mailing list?

Basicially a double opt-in mailing list is created by someone REQUESTING information on a given topic not by them having their e-mail address "stolen" from them. Maybe they are interested in boating, hunting, cars, furthering their education, or changing careers. The process for obtaining these names is simple and straight forward.

People start by searching the web looking for educational opportunities, they find our web site(s) or maybe they receive an e-mail asking them if they are interested in getting a degree in xyz field. They click the link and fill out a form asking that they be put on the mailing list for educational opportunities in that field of study. There are over 60 fields of study that we track. This is step one in a a double opt in system.

For the next step they will receive a follow up e-mail asking them to confirm that they did, in fact, want to receive further e-mails from us that are related to educational opportunities. (Or any other of a hundred interest areas.) If they click accept, a cookie is placed on their computer so that further e-mails from us will bypass their filtering system and be delivered to their inbox. It's this confirmation step that makes our database a double opt-in program. This process also makes our lists Can-Spam compliant.

One other key factor to consider is that most  people own multiple accounts. These e-mail addresses tend to be home/personal addresses, but I know in the case of my wife and I we have 9email accounts between us. I have two business accounts and 5 personal accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL) and my wife has two accounts (Yahoo, AOL). At any given time I use multiple addresses for form completion or when asking for more information. So it is very possible that someone may have filled out multiple requests using different e-mails. There is no real way of eliminating the duplicates, but where there are duplicates you are assured that they will be receiving your request. We typically e-mail 10% more e-mails than are ordered to cover bounces, but our bounce/non-deliverable rate is typically less than 10%.


One last thought. Many e-mail lists that are created by bots have an infinite life. They use them over and over and over again, even when the address has gone dead. We however, send a confirming e-mail every two months to every e-mail in our database (yes, millions of conformations) asking the recipient if they still have an interest in whatever topic they selected. If they say no, they are removed from the database, if they say yes, they stay. Each e-mail campaign also has an opt-out option at the bottom of the page. A recent campaign of 182,000 e-mails got 24 opt-outs. Not a significant number, and a testament to the quality of the names on the list.

I hope this helps! Contact us for your next e-mail campaign and we will help you reach your needed student prospects.

Quantity or Quality? Do e-mail campaigns have to be large to be effective?

I have been conducting a number of e-mail campaigns lately and have uncovered some interesting facts. More is not necessarily better. Many campaigns have been running in the 100,000+ e-mails sent range, with about a 28% open rate and 1,300 click throughs. Yet, two recent campaigns were under 50,000 emails (one was under 6,000) and they acheived 1,560 click throughs (on 50,000 sent) and the other 1,200 click throughs (on 5,890 sent). Other campaigns with 180,000 e-mails sent got about the same number of click throughs.

In analyzing the difference between the large versus small campaigns the results can be explained in one way. Targeting! Both of the small mailings were for very targeted programs in a VERY specific geographic area. The name recognition of the school, combined with simple, uncomplicated design and copy allowed the recipient to:

1) Identify quickly that this was an institution with name recognition
2) Was in their target area of interests.
3) Was worth looking into more deeply for more information.

Each of these programs, received 100% of their click throughs for follow up. I will be checking with my clients to see what their conversion rate may be. However, in the meantime, e-mail marketing can deliver large numbers of prospects to your door. People waiting to complete their degree, or advance their degree. Will you get them to attend YOUR school? Or will another school win their business?

For more information, contact:
David Fant
Market Mapping plus LLC
616-956-7129
david@marketmappingplus.com

Targeted E-mail campaigns are the key to success

I have been running a number of E-mail campaigns for Universities across the country. An interesting phenominon has occured in that the smaller the campaign, the higher the response. The key has become how to focus on the EXACT market segment you want and then focusing your message on those prospects. I have recently gotten over 50% open rates and as high as a 32% click through rate for two schools on highly targeted campaigns which delivered over 1,200 new prospective students to these schools.

What are the keys to their success?

1) Their market segments they are reaching were very specific. RN's and MBA degree prospects.

2) They identified the benefits of attending their school over their competitors. BENEFITS, not FEATURES.

3) They know who their key competitors are, and focus on pointing out why they can exceed their competitors programs.

4) The message is simple, 5 or 6 bulleted points at the most.

You don't need to have a complex message filled with graphics and images. Keep it simple, to the point and those who have an interest will follow.

If you need to learn more about E-mail marketing and prospect development contact us today and we will be happy to help you acheive your admissions goals.

David Fant
Owner
Market Mapping plus LLC
David@marketmappingplus.com